Torridity
by Joker'sOnlyFear
Summary: The dog days of summer have landed hot and hard on Gotham City, and the Joker and Jonathan Crane are waiting for something. Slight Joker/Crane you-know-what.


_Author's Note: Summer's coming and I was bored. Simple as that. No REAL heavy stuff._

* * *

98.6 F.

Ninety-eight-point-six degrees Fahrenheit. The average normal body temperature of species _sapiens_, genus _homo_ - and the current on-the-nose torridity on all the thermometers in all the buildings in the vast metropolis.

Torridity. Referring to "heat" in terms of the climate.

And the heat was everywhere.

One would have to be crazy to be outside in this weather.

- - -

_Shhhhhhhhiiiiiinnnnkkk_.

The Joker drew the blade almost lovingly along the whetstone as he sat cross-legged on the purple trench coat spread out beneath him, sharpening the knife slowly, managing to present an ominous air even as he was clad in nothing but a wife-beater and dark green boxer shorts.

He and his partner had been out here since sunrise, waiting.

Waiting for _what_, even they could not say.

Most people would not be sitting out on the roof of an abandoned and run-down parking garage just _waiting _for something to happen. Most people would not be lounging around at noontime during the hottest months of the year, victims to the sun's sweltering blaze. Most people would not be carrying over a dozen knives in their coat pockets just because they thought they _needed_ to carry something in them, because they couldn't _stand_ for those pockets to be empty (to say nothing of the obvious fact of the arming of oneself through these implements).

But the Joker naturally wasn't most people.

He almost wished he had chosen a better spot for them to stay awhile.

The inside was filthy and dark (not that they really cared - but _still_, a little maintenance now and then would have been nice), there was no air-conditioning, the food stashed in the tiny refrigerator inside the ticket office was running low and wasn't worth shit anyway.

The scorching air was not the only place from which intense warmth emitted itself, for it also pulsed sensually from the pale rose-colored lips, hollowed throat, shallow chest and certain masculine extremities of the lightly dozing Jonathan Crane, wearing only a pair of blue plaid boxer shorts, and whose fingers were tangled loosely in the clown's oily green hair, his head on the lunatic's shoulder as he sat sideways in his lap.

An empty bottle of sunscreen lay next to Crane's glasses atop the haphazard pile of their clothing a few feet away. Jonathan had insisted they apply the sunblock if they were going to be wearing nothing but their underclothes out in this heat - especially to protect and maintain his own snowy complexion.

Makeup running slightly with perspiration, Joker set the newly-honed blade down on the pavement "floor" beneath him - whose distant edges shimmered hazily in the sun's blistering rays - and picked up another, beginning to make the fresh knife ready for use as he lowered his head and almost tenderly brushed his lips against Crane's, leaving a blood-like smear of red lipstick behind to accompany the loving gesture. Jonathan sighed, smiling as he licked the makeup away and snuggled closer to his man in his sleep. Even though the weather was really far too hot for such intimate closeness, neither psychopath seemed to care very much - for this, however temporary, was home.

- - -

The dog days of summer had arrived to pester even the morbid and crime-ridden city of Gotham, relentless and cruel. Kids were doling out speed in the streets and smoking the Virginia Slims they had nicked from their mothers, who lay in drunken stupors on their beds, too tired and too hot and too intoxicated to monitor the "extracurricular activities" of their children.

One would have to be crazy to be outside in this weather.

* * *

_Sorry about the first "sentence" but my computer keyboard's too stupid to have the little circle degree symbol on it. Yes (_tired sigh_), I am _aware _that that last segment was a repeat. R.S.V.P._


End file.
